Senior Manager, Scientific Data Engineering
TetraScience · Cambridge · $150,000–$230,000 (stated in the posting)
About the Role
We're looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead Scientific Data Engineers (SDE) spread across multiple forward deployed engineering squads and drive both technical and organizational excellence. This role is ideal for a leader who can zoom out to see systemic inefficiencies across teams and processes, then roll up their sleeves to fix them — while also building a culture where engineers do their best work.
What You'll Do
Team & People Leadership
- Supervise and guide SDEs in each squad in planning, implementation, testing, and documentation. Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement across teams.
- Lead by example - comfortable with diving deeper into organizational and technical challenges and help the team navigate ambiguity and vagueness.
- Manage performance, career development, and org design as teams scale
- Hire, mentor, and retain strong engineering talent; build a pipeline of future technical leaders
Operational Excellence
- Proactively identify inefficiencies in engineering workflows, processes, and cross-team handoffs — don't wait to be told something is broken
- Design and implement systems (planning cadences, metrics, tooling) that increase velocity and reduce friction across teams
- Establish and track meaningful engineering metrics (cycle time, deployment frequency, incident rates, etc.) to guide decisions
- Drive continuous process improvement, balancing speed with sustainability
Technical & Engineering Excellence
- Set and uphold engineering standards for code quality, architecture, testing, and operational reliability across teams
- Partner with tech leads and architects on key technical decisions and trade-offs
- Champion best practices in system design, scalability, and maintainability
- Stay close enough to the technical details to ask sharp questions and unblock teams when needed
Strategy & Cross-Functional Partnership
- Translate company and product strategy into actionable engineering roadmaps across multiple teams
- Partner closely with Product, Design, and other stakeholders to align priorities and timelines
- Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to executive leadership
- Own budget, headcount planning, and resource allocation for your organization
Requirements
What We're Looking For
Required
- Overall 10+ years of work experience, including at least 5 years being a manager or leading through other managers
- Proven track record of identifying and resolving operational inefficiencies at scale (process, tooling, or organizational)
- Demonstrated commitment to engineering excellence — quality, reliability, and maintainable systems, not just shipping speed
- Experience managing managers and building organizational structure as teams grow
- Strong technical background with the credibility to engage deeply on architecture and design decisions
- Excellent communication skills, with experience presenting to executive stakeholders
- Experience setting and using engineering metrics to drive decisions and improvements
- Comfortable working in a changing environment and navigating through unclear requirements
Nice to Have
- Experience scaling an engineering org through significant growth (e.g., 2x–5x headcount)
- Experience working in startups
- Experience in working with life science data
- Experience with distributed/remote engineering teams
- History of building or maturing engineering processes from scratch (SDLC, release management, incident response)
What Success Looks Like in the First Year
- Identify key engineering operational bottlenecks and inefficiencies
- Engineering teams operate with clear, well-understood processes and reduced cross-team friction
- Engineering teams able to accurately predict engineering effort and deliver high-quality products on time
- Measurable improvement in key engineering metrics (velocity, quality, reliability)
- Engineering is seen as a trusted, proactive partner by Product and executive leadership
Benefits
100% employer paid benefits for all eligible employees and immediate family members.
401K.
Unlimited paid time off (PTO).
Company paid Life Insurance, LTD/STD.
The salary range for this position is $150K-$230K USD. The salary range posted reflects our target baseline for this role. Final compensation is determined by a thorough evaluation of factors including the candidate’s specific experience, localized market data, and internal team equity.
This position isn't eligible for visa sponsorship
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